Creative Project Reflection Since I was very young, The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Anderson has been my favorite fairytale. There was something so fascinating to me about a young girl who wanted so desperately to be something she was not, possibly because I was a young human dying to be a mermaid. The idea of a kingdom under the sea made of crystals and gems and occupied with fish-tailed people was so beautiful that I wanted to revisit it for this assignment. As I was writing The Third Sister I did not try to follow along completely with Propp’s 31 Functions, but I did make sure my story corresponded with the second sphere in which the hero goes on their main quest, for the purpose of isolating Leala as the main character and the heroine. As in the original tale, the sea-witch serves as both the villain and the donor. This story would fit into several different areas of the Aarne/Thompson system within the “Tales of Magic” category: supernatural adversaries, supernatural tasks, and supernatural power. Despite that I love the story of The Little Mermaid, I never liked that it was a tale of un-requited love. The little mermaid’s hopeless case is extremely sad, and rereading the story I found that I felt much sympathy for her siblings who allowed their hair to be cut off by the sea witch for a chance at saving their sister’s life. There is so much passionate love in the story, outside of just the main arc of the little mermaid and the prince, that is barely touched upon both in the original tale and in popular adaptations such as Disney’s version. When I was re-reading the story this last time, I was drawn to the character of the third sister. She is only mentioned on her own once, but she is described as being “the bravest of them all.” She is not afraid of getting close to humans on the land, just like the little mermaid, and based on this I decided to give her alone the task of saving her sister. My story goes behind the scenes to show what happened back home at the sea-palace after the little mermaid ran away; the third sister, determined to save the life of her wayward sibling, resorts to bribing the sea witch for a bid at her sister’s salvation. One thing I changed from the original when I was writing this is the names of the characters. Anderson chose not to name anyone in his story, instead referring to the characters by their pronouns. I named only two characters, the little mermaid became Khalida, which means everlasting, and refers to the end in which she receives an eternal soul. The third sister is named Leala, meaning brave. I tried to find names that were interesting and foreign in origin, but not completely absent from the European culture in which The Little Mermaid is set. The overarching plot of The Third Sister does not depart far from the plot of The Little Mermaid because I wanted to use this story to return to the ideas of love, sacrifice, and loss that were so strong in Anderson’s version. So many people these days are only familiar with the happy ending of the Disney version of the story that I felt a need to bring back the dark themes originally included by Anderson. I feel that in modern times fairy tales are viewed as light, fluffy stories to be read to toddlers and I wanted to return this classic story to its original function of taking the harsh realities of life and incorporating magic to make it easier to swallow.